In seconds I remembered
relief, love even, after waking
to the terror of a live snake
turning in my abdomen.
Abdicating to my tasks,
I turn the brightness up
like god does at every dawn
on their two screens of the world.
Growing against sunless dark
inside me, her a universe
in which the stark possible
hums, round as bulbs in springtime
soil. The body is always god-
entire: barrel for a snake.
Emily Oliver lives in Minneapolis with her husband, nonfiction writer Dylan Reynolds and daughter Alma. She received an MFA in Poetry from Cornell University. Her poetry has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Prairie Schooner, DIAGRAM and elsewhere. She has been supported by a Sicca Grant, the Corson-Browning Poetry Prize and a 2024 MN State Arts Board grant. Emily teaches in and is the Grants and Curriculum coordinator for the TREC Prison Education Program at Metro State University, Minnesota’s only BA program for incarcerated students. She is also the Contingent Faculty Vice President of the IFO Faculty Union.